According to MarketWatch, Apple’s market capitalization as calculated by S&P rose today to $241.5 billion, thus topping Microsoft’s, which stood at $239.5 billion. The “market cap,” as this key financial metric is often called, represents the total value of all outstanding shares of a company—in other words, the number of shares times their price. That makes market capitalization an indicator of how much the markets think that a particular company is worth, rather than an objective measurement of a company's assets and liabilities...